Abstract
San communities in Southern Africa have been historically regarded as gerontocratic spaces where young people lack agency. The traditional chiefs, elders and older opinion leaders who are thought to be repositories and custodians of knowledge, have thus been the focus of researchers and research works. However, in recent times, young people have re-positioned themselves at the forefront of modern acculturation processes taking place in these communities.
In response to the lack of empirically engaging contemporary indigenous youth research in South Africa, this thesis explores three interrelated concepts of indigeneity, identity and citizenship within the context of a transitioning and hyper-modernising !Xun and Khwe San youth of Platfontein, South Africa, aged between 18 and 24. The study, a product of five years (2013–2017) of intermittent ethnographic fieldwork in Platfontein, adopted participatory observation, semi-structured interviews and focus groups to examine how youth negotiate the complexity and contradictions of being imagined as “Indigenous”, “immigrants” and “citizens” in late-modern, post-apartheid South Africa. Subculture theory – the Cultural Studies paradigm – was used to make sense of the distinct and socially dynamic practices amongst the San youth.
Located within a sub-field known as urban indigeneity, the study reveals how increasing access to digital and new media technology allows youth in Platfontein to develop new strategies of agency and glide through previously assumed boundaries: in terms of collective identities, and in the areas of indigeneity (culture) and citizenship (collective socio-political integration). However, amid the youth-led cultural upheaval and changes taking place in the township of Platfontein, this study identifies a pattern and develops a model that explains how new culture and phenomena permeate the modernising township. The thesis opens a new window for academic and public apprehension of the Indigenous youth landscape in South Africa while contributing to the ongoing discourse on decolonisation (in social research) and the nation-building debate in contemporary South Africa.
D.Litt. et Phil. (Philosophy)